John: We don't even understand our own music Spider: It doesn't, does it matter whether we understand it? At least it'll give us . . . strength John: I know but maybe we could get into it more if we understood it

Post by monkybunney on Mar 26, 2012 12:53:03 GMT -5

Readin this thread just reminded me of one of my fondest memories from 2010 that I had forgotten about.

CSB time: We showed up early at the Which stage to get a good spot for the Flaming Lips. Before the show Wayne gave the audience some advice regarding their light show, saying in effect that they have allot of crazy lights and sometimes people can get a little overwhelmed by them. He said that if you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, uncomfortable, or to put it frankly freaking out. "Here's what you do....OK....Don't look at them! Just turn around".

We were in a very very heightened state of awareness for that show, and about half way through their second set, Dark Side of The Moon, I began to feel at first light headed. This progressed to a tunnelling of my vision like I was about to faint. Then while this unpleasant feeling was going on I started sweating profusely, my mouth became extremely dry. And every time the lights blared out at the audience they made me feel nauseous on top of everything else. I took Wayne's advice, and was a little annoyed that I had to because I'm not exactly an amateur when it comes to these recreational activities, but I took his advice and turned around so that I wasn't looking into the lights.

We were pretty close to the stage and there were only a few hundred people in front of us. When I turned around all I could see was what appeared to be tens of thousands of people stretching out beyond my line of sight that had filled in behind us. That didn't help at all. The thought occurred to me that I might be in real trouble here, and that if I go down in this spot it could be outright dangerous. My girl friend turned to look what I was doing and immediately recognized that I was not in a good place. I registered the look of fear and concern on her face and thought to myself "Wow, I must look really fucked up!"

I told her, "I'm going to walk over to the path on the edge of the field. I need to go somewhere where it's less crowded. I'm feeling a little weird. I'll meet you guys after the show." I was trying hard to down play it because I didn't want to spoil anyone's good time with being concerned about me. "I'll be fine, I just need to be in a little more open area."

My girl friend wasn't hearing any of that, and insisted on walking with me. She said,"I've seen enough pretty lights for now, I'm coming with you, you don't look so good." We made our way through the massive throngs of people and as we approached the edge of the crowd I was already feeling a little better. The tunnel vision and nausea had stopped, but I was not in a good place yet. We decided to make our way over to the What stage field since there was nothing going on over there. And we came to the ditch.

I was still a little off balance and accidentally stepped one foot off the plywood. It sunk ankle deep into the mud with a distinct SQUEWISHHH sound. "Oh No! I've stepped in it" as I pulled my foot out it made an equally distinct SHLLOOPHT sound. Those sounds seemed so exaggerated, so cartoonish, that I busted out laughing. "What the fuck did I just step in?!?!"

We decided to just head back to camp and put our brains back together and get our bearings before returning to centeroo. I was giggling the whole way replaying the SQUEWISHHHLOOOPHT 'Oh No!' sound combination in my head. When we got back to camp and saw the damage we both started laughing! My entire foot was encased in this thick gray elephant skin looking cast of mud.

That ditch may be a mother fucker. But it transformed an evening that was going sideways off the rails for me into one of my favorite Bonnaroo memories. God bless that mud!